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Groundwater irrigation market patterns and practices over an agriculturally developed province of north-west India

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Abstract

The continuous demand of groundwater for irrigation in the agricultural sector has shown remarkable development of groundwater resources in Haryana. Small farmers with limited resources cannot install deep tube wells and therefore have to buy groundwater from large farmers for irrigation. These groundwater irrigation markets have emerged as robust and leading irrigation institutions. Their prevalence supports about 15% of the total irrigated area. Amongst the different size of land ownership, the small farmers irrigate nearly 44% of their cultivated land with purchased water from the neighboring large farmers. The cropping intensity achieved by groundwater buyers is far higher than the sellers. However, on an average each seller supports 1.6 buyers, 6.1 ha of land and 34% of the buyer’s land. Generally, the sellers exploit groundwater buyers in groundwater transactions. The sellers follow the principle of profit maximization and do not negotiate with buyers on groundwater irrigation markets norms. The major objective of this study is to highlight the patterns and practices of groundwater irrigation markets in Haryana.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the critical and constructive comments made initially by the editor and subsequently by two anonymous reviewers which really improved the final manuscript. We also express our gratitude to Dr. Ravinder Malhotra, Principal Scientist, Division of Dairy Economics, Statistics and Management, National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal for fruitful discussions in interpreting the obtained statistical results.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra, 136119, India

    Omvir Singh & Amrita Kasana

  2. Department of Geography, Dyal Singh College, Karnal, 132001, India

    Tejpal Sharma

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  1. Omvir Singh
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  2. Amrita Kasana
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Correspondence to Omvir Singh.

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Singh, O., Kasana, A. & Sharma, T. Groundwater irrigation market patterns and practices over an agriculturally developed province of north-west India. GeoJournal 85, 703–729 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-019-09992-2

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